they credited the underground with a ubiquitousness: Sydnor, Slavery in Mississippi, pp. 88–89, 105, 112.
“The life of anxiety”: Coffin, Life and Travels of Addison Coffin, p. 48.
After weeks or months concealed: Ibid., pp. 15, 35; Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery, pp. 241, 244; Susan Hubbard, letter to Joseph and Mary, October 13, 1843, Quaker Collection, Guilford College, Greensboro, N. C.; Mendenhall Plantation Historic Site, High Point, N. C., author visits, June 2002.
a vividly detailed account: Coffin, “Early Settlement of Friends in North Carolina,” p. 127.
Addison’s brother Alfred: Ibid., p. 105; Coffin, Life and Travels of Addison Coffin, p. 14.
One of the most daring escapes: William and Ellen Craft, “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery,” in I Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives, vol. 2, Yuval Taylor, ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), pp. 487 ff.
a Virginia slave named Henry Brown: Brown, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, pp. 29 ff, 45 ff, 57–62; Still, Underground Railroad, pp. 67–73.
personal liberty laws enacted: McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, pp. 39–40, 65–66; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, p. 181.
“Everybody heard of their coming”: Jay P. Smith, “Many Michigan Cities on Underground Railroad in Days of Civil War,” Detroit News, April 14, 1918.
stationmaster in Wilmington, Thomas Garrett: Still, Underground Railroad, p. 658.
On January 24, 1848: J. S. Holliday, The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), pp. 300–1.
The crisis had been foreshadowed: Garry Wills, “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), pp. 222–25.
The debate that began in February: Morison, Oxford History, vol. 2, pp. 330–35; Mayer, All on Fire, pp. 393–95.
Clay opened the debate: Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, pp. 455–58; Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Age of Jackson (New York: Little, Brown, 1945), pp. 82–83.
On March 4: Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, pp. 453, 461; Current, John C. Calhoun, p. 32.
Calhoun’s complaints were deeply felt: Garry Wills, “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), pp. 5–12; Nye, Fettered Freedom, pp. 226–34; Cohn, Life and Times of King Cotton, pp. 97–100; Philanthropist, August 30, 1840.
broader demographic trends: Cohn, Life and Times of King Cotton, pp. 46, 49, 83, 88.
But Daniel Webster’s speech: Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, pp. 83–84; Daniel Webster, North Star, July 18, 1850.
The South loved: Peterson, The Great Triumvirate pp. 463–66; North Star, April 12, 1850; National Era, May 9, 1850.
The debate continued: Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, p. 471; Siebert, Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, p. 341; Harrold, Subversives, p. 148.
Chaplin was busy that summer: Harrold, Subversives, p. 147.
charged with larceny: Ibid., p. 157.
Gerrit Smith wrote: Harlow, Gerrit Smith, pp. 291–93.
abolitionists held: Sernett, North Star Country, pp. 129–32; Harrold, Subversives, pp. 158–59; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, p. 190.
A Tennessee newspaper: National Anti-Slavery Standard, September 26, 1850.
Rockville slaveholders: Harlow, Gerrit Smith, pp. 291–93; Harrold, Subversives, p. 161.
the new Fugitive Slave Act: McDougall, Fugitive Slaves, pp. 30, 112–14; Nye, Fettered Freedom, p. 201.
Webster, with visions: Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, p. 474.
Meetings of condemnation: Meetings at Canandaigua and Rochester, North Star, April 12, 1850.
“Wo to the poor”: Frederick Douglass, North Star, October 3, 1850.
CHAPTER 15: DO WE CALL THIS THE LAND OF THE FREE?
At about 2 P.M.: Collison, Shadrach Minkins, pp. 112–33; Joel Strangis, Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery (North Haven, Conn.: Linnet Books, 1999), pp. 74–79; Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), pp. 148–51; National Era, February 20, 1851, February 26, 1851, and February 27, 1851; Liberator, February 21, 1851, and February 28, 1851; Voice of the Fugitive, February 26, 1851; Leonard W. Levy, “The Sims Case: The Fugitive Slave Law in Boston in 1851,” Journal of Negro History 35 (1950): 39–74.
Minkins, meanwhile: Collison, Shadrach Minkins, pp. 151–58; Strangis, Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery, p. 86; Record Book of the Boston Vigilance Committee, copy in Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.
“Do we call this”: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life of Henry David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), pp. 469, 480; Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England 1815–1865 (New York: Dutton, 1936), pp. 286–87, 434.
Before Thoreau: Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience, Paul Lauter, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), pp. 18, 24–25, 29, 36.
“We must trample”: Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, “Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s,” Journal of American History 58 (1972): 923–37.
“This so-called Fugitive Slave Law”: Frederick Douglass’ Paper, December 4, 1851.
That sad honor went: Siebert, Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, p. 269.
There were captures: Ibid., pp. 317–18; Collison, Shadrach Minkins, p. 107; Voice of the Fugitive, February 26, 1851; George F. Nagle, “Central Pennsylvania Fugitive Slave Cases,” Bugle (Journal of the Camp Curtin Historical Society and Civil War Round Table) 12, no. 1 (January 2002), pp. 6–16.
Daniel Webster, promised: May, Some Recollections on Our Anti-Slavery Conflict, pp. 373–74; Hunter, To Set the Captives Free, p. 120; Frederick Douglass’ Paper, December 16, 1851.
Fugitive slaves who had lived: Douglass, “My Bondage and My Freedom,” p. 279; Siebert, Underground Railroad, pp. 194, 248–50; Campbell, Slave Catchers, pp. 7, 62–63; Voice of the Fugitive, January 1, 1851; Levy, “Sims Case.”
Columbia, Pennsylvania, one of the largest: Leroy Hopkins, “Black Eldorado on the Susquehannah: The Emergence of Black Columbia, 1726–1861,” Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society, 89, no. 4 (1985), pp. 110–32; Leroy Hopkins, “Bethel African Methodist Church in Lancaster: Prolegomenon to A Social History,” Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society 90, no. 4 (1986), pp. 205–31; Columbia (Pa.) Spy, January 15, 1851, March 8, 1851, and April 26, 1851; Frederick Douglass’ Paper, November 13, 1851. 324 Reverend Jermain Loguen of Syracuse: Loguen, Rev. J. W. Loguen, pp. 343–48, 351–52, 391–95; Hunter, To Set the Captives Free, pp. 19–21.
Edward Gorsuch was: Thomas P. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 4–6, 11, 14, 17–19, 44; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” p. 120; Charles D. Spotts, “The Pilgrim’s Pathway: The Underground Railroad in Lancaster Country,” Community History Annual 5, Lancaster (1966); Lancaster Intelligencer and Journal, September 16, 1851.
Gorsuch did not imagine: The story of the Christiana riot is based on William Parker, “The Freedman’s Story,” Atlantic Monthly, February 1866, pp. 152–66, and March 1866, pp. 276–88; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 108–30; Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, pp. 51–74; Lancaster Intelligencer and Journal, September 16, 1851, and September 23, 1851; Voice of the Fugitive, September 24, 1851; Spotts, “Pilgrim’s Pathway”; Nagle, “Central Pennsylvania Fugitive Slave Cases”; Mark C. Ebersole, “Abolition Divides the Meeting House: Quakers and Slavery in Early Lancaster County,” Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society 102, no. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 3–23; Leroy Hopkins, interview with the author, Millersville State College, Millersville, Pa., March 13, 2003.
abolitionist congressman, Thaddeus Stevens: Hans L. Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2001), pp. 14, 73, 25; Fergus M. Bordewich, “Digging into a Historic
Rivalry,” Smithsonian Magazine, February 2004, pp. 96–107.
William Parker had no illusions: Parker, “Freedman’s Story,” March 1866, pp. 288–90; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 223–24, 247–53, 260–68; Douglass, “Life and Times,” pp. 724–26.
If Parker’s resistance: Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 126–27; Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, pp. 72–74, 86–93; Nagle, “Central Pennsylvania Fugitive Slave Cases.”
Nevertheless, William Henry: The story of the Jerry rescue is based on Loguen, Rev. J. W. Loguen, pp. 398–429; May, Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict, pp. 363, 373–78; Earl Sperry, The Jerry Rescue (Syracuse: Onondaga Historical Society, 1924), pp. 41–51; Pettit, Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad, pp. 32–33; Hunter, To Set the Captives Free, pp. 114–15, 122–26; Sernett, North Star Country, pp. 136–41; Voice of the Fugitive, October 8, 1851; Frederick Douglass’ Paper, October 16, 1851, November 13, 1851, February 4, 1853, February 11, 1853, and February 18, 1853.
Twenty-six men: Loguen, Rev. J. W. Loguen, pp. 427–29, 434–43; May, Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict, pp. 379–83; Hunter, To Set the Captives Free, pp. 129, 138; Sernett, North Star Country, p. 143.
The government fared: Collison, Shadrach Minkins, pp. 147–48, 192–95; Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, pp. ix, 86–93, 132–37; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 126–27, 129–30; Paul Finkelman, “The Treason Trial of Castner Hanway,” in American Political Trials, Michael Belknap, ed. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), pp. 79–100.
Not surprisingly, there: Campbell, Slave Catchers, pp. 148, 157, 169, 199; Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, p, xi.
Isaac Tatum Hopper died: Child, Isaac T. Hopper, pp. 473–77; and Bacon, Lamb’s Warrior, pp. 182–86.
Public opinion in both North and South: Nye, Fettered Freedom, pp. 175–76; Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, pp. 104–5; Pease and Pease, “Confrontation and Abolition,” pp. 923–37; Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, pp. 118–19; Frederick Douglass’ Paper, February 11, 1853, and February 18, 1853.
The language of abolitionism: Campbell, Slave Catchers, p. 53; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 129–30; Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, pp. 132–37.
the flood of refugees only grew: Voice of the Fugitive, October 8, 1851, November 5, 1851, and December 3, 1851.
CHAPTER 16: GENERAL TUBMAN
Kessiah Bowley: Sarah Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn, N. Y.: W. J. Moses, 1869), pp. 57–64; John Creighton, historian, interview with the author, Cambridge, MD, February 12, 2004; Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land (New York: Random House, 2003), pp. 89 ff, and 324, nn. 11–17; Kate Clifford Larson, e-mail to author, January 21, 2004; Harkless Bowley, letter to Earl Conrad, August 8, 1939, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 45–46; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, pp. 27, 59, 68.
There were others: John P. Parker, His Promised Land, Stuart Seely Sprague, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), pp. 100 ff; Coon, “Great Escapes,” p. 2; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, pp. 11, 14; Siebert, Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, pp. 153–54.
But there was no one quite like: Jean M. Humez, Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), p. 25; Larson, Bound for the Promised Land, pp. 78–79; Lydia Maria Child, letter to John Greenleaf Whittier, January 21, 1862, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection, Schomburg Center, New York; Thomas Garrett, letter to Eliza Wigham, December 16, 1855, Quaker Collection, Haverford College, Haverford, PA. 347 General Tubman: Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood, p. 242.
The fifth of at least nine children: Statement of Harriet Tubman, in Drew, Refugee, p. 20; Harkless Bowley, letter to Earl Conrad, August 8, 1939, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection, Schomburg Center, New York; Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, p. 13; Larson, Bound for the Promised Land, pp. 42, 310; Humez, Harriet Tubman, pp. 211, 342–48.
She was eleven or twelve: Franklin B. Sanborn, “Harriet Tubman,” Boston Commonwealth, July 17, 1863; Mrs. William Tatlock, interview with Earl Conrad, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection, Schomburg Center, New York; Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, pp. 54–56; Sarah Bradford, Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People (Bedford, Mass.: Applewood Books, 1993), pp. 15–17; Florence Carter, manuscript, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection, Schomburg Center, New York; Larson, Bound for the Promised Land, pp. 39, 42–43; Humez, Harriet Tubman, pp. 178–79, 210–11.
Slavery in Maryland: Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground, pp. 10–15.
Ross adapted readily: Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, pp. 75–76; Mrs. William Tatlock, interview with Earl Conrad, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection, Schomburg Center, New York; Harkless Bowley, letter to Earl Conrad, August 8, 1939, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection; Larson, Bound for the Promised Land, pp. 48, 52, 56, 64, 73–79.
Tubman’s mind was overcharged: Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, pp. 13–20; Bradford, Moses of Her People, pp. 114–15; Sanborn, Harriet Tubman; Humez, Harriet Tubman, pp. 181–84.
Characteristically, she did not leave: Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, p. 76; Mrs. William Tatlock, interview with Earl Conrad, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection, Schomburg Center, New York; Humez, Harriet Tubman, pp. 216–18; Larson, Bound for the Promised Land, pp. 80–83.
“When I found I had crossed”: Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, pp. 19–20.
For the next decade: Ibid., pp. 13–20; Humez, Harriet Tubman, pp. 25, 260; Thomas Garrett, letter to Eliza Wigham, December 16, 1855, Quaker Collection, Haverford College, Haverford, Pa.
Emboldened by her success: Bradford, Moses of Her People, p. 112; Larson, Bound for the Promised Land, pp. 89–90; Humez, Harriet Tubman, p. 183; Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom (Boston: Little, Brown, 2004), pp. 82–83.
Before the year was out: Larson, Bound for the Promised Land, pp. 93–96.
Although, in legend: Ibid., 65–66; John Creighton, interview with the author, Cambridge, Md., February 12, 2004.
She preferred to do her underground work: Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, pp. 21, 25, 50; Larson, Bound for the Promised Land, pp. 131–32; Humez, Harriet Tubman, p. 138; Siebert, Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, p. 68; Robert C. Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” p. 355.
She was a consummate actress: Mrs. William Tatlock, interview with Earl Conrad, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection, Schomburg Center, New York; Harkless Bowley, letter to Earl Conrad, August 8, 1939, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection.
“Hail, oh hail, ye happy spirits”: Bradford, Moses of Her People, pp. 36–38.
Tubman expected her passengers: Harkless Bowley, letter to Earl Conrad, August 8, 1939, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection, Schomburg Center, New York; Mrs. William Tatlock, interview with Earl Conrad, Earl Conrad/Harriet Tubman Collection; Still, Underground Railroad, pp. 305–6; Sanborn, “Harriet Tubman”; Larson, Bound for the Promised Land, pp. 100–3.
One of these men was Thomas Garrett: James McGowan, Station Master on the Underground Railroad: The Life and Letters of Thomas Garrett (Moylan, Pa.: Whimsie Press, 1977), pp. 2, 27, 41, 49, 60–64, 70–74, 111, 121, 129–30; Still, Underground Railroad, pp. 649, 655, 741–45, 775; Sanborn, “Harriet Tubman,” pp. 54–55; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 243–44, 249, 256, 270; William C. Kashatus, Just Over the Line, pp. 19–20, 51–54; National Era, July 13, 1848; Stowe, Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, pp. 54–55.
“Her like it is probable”: Still, Underground Railroad, pp. 305–6.
Still was born free: Linn Washington Jr., “The Chr
onicle of an American First Family,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 11, 1987.
He coordinated escapes: Stanley Harrold, “Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D. C., 1828–1865,” Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 2003, pp. 162, 212, 214–217; Still, Underground Railroad, pp. 161–63, 260–61, 583–89; Siebert, Underground Railroad, pp. 81–82; Collison, Shadrach Minkins, pp. 46–48.
freed slave from Alabama named Peter Friedman: Kate E. R. Pickard, The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, Being the Personal Recollections of Peter Still and His Wife ‘Vina,’ after Forty Years of Slavery (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1970), pp. 245–69; Still, Underground Railroad, pp. 18–19; Washington, “Chronicle of an American First Family”; “Slaves Liberated—A Family United,” Provincial Freeman, January 27, 1854.
a crusty underground veteran named Seth Concklin: Pickard, Kidnapped and the Ransomed, pp. 377–99; Still, Underground Railroad, pp. 1–5.
he offered to personally bring Peter Friedman’s family: Pickard, Kidnapped and the Ransomed, pp. 279–82.
Initially, Concklin hoped: Thornbrough, Negro in Indiana, pp. 62–63; Stanley W. Campbell, Slave Catchers, pp. 148, 157, 169, 199; Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, pp. 59–60; James E. Morlock, Was It Yesterday? (Evansville, Ind: University of Evansville Press, 1980), p. 124; Coon, “Reconstructing the Underground Railroad Crossings.”
Frustrated but undaunted: Pickard, Kidnapped and the Ransomed, pp. 284–85; Still, Underground Railroad, pp. 5–7, 13–14.
a secure underground line: Gil R. Stormont, History of Gibson County, Indiana (Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Co., 1914), pp. 224–26.
At the end of January: Pickard, Kidnapped and the Ransomed, pp. 286–89; Still, Underground Railroad, pp. 7–8; Stormont, History of Gibson County, pp. 226–28; Donald Davidson, The Tennessee, vol. 1: The Old River: Frontier to Secession (Nashville, Tenn.: J. S. Sanders, 1991), pp. 284–85, 299–301.
Thus far, they had been traveling: Pickard, Kidnapped and the Ransomed, pp. 290–98.
Bound for Canaan Page 61